Antalis Promotions Looked Great on Paper, But Even Better with Vistex Software

Now It All Adds Up for Antalis S.A.

Overview

Based in France, Antalis S.A. is the leading paper, packaging, and visual communications wholesale distributor outside of the U.S. Antalis’ business model was being driven by high volume and low margins. They identified the need to target their business-to-business (B2B) promotions more efficiently to increase conversion. Antalis serves over 115,000 customers in 39 countries, via 117 distribution centers performing 11,000 worldwide deliveries daily. To further improve Antalis’ eCommerce presence and efficiency (39 websites online), advanced promotion capabilities (construction and management) were identified as a key lever. In 2016, after a strong selection process, Antalis chose Vistex as a solution. The key challenge was to manage what they really needed to stay competitive: creating deals for slow-moving and obsolete stock, improving eCommerce transactions through the Antalis website, and integrating promotions to match their omnichannel marketing strategy deployment. In addition, a key differentiator in the tool selection was making it easier for product managers to build promotions that take advantage of market opportunities.

To that end, Antalis sought a preconfigured solution to run omnichannel promotions smoothly and efficiently, to boost sales and consolidate its market leadership. They needed an automated, closed-loop system for their web sales to leverage business intelligence for improved customer relationship marketing, and to enable omnichannel marketing strategies against the backdrop of their SAP ERP system.

"The pricing option for SAP Data Maintenance for ERP by Vistex offers us a flexible, cost-effective solution that supports our focus on an omnichannel sales approach to increase customer satisfaction and foster customer loyalty."

Laurent Atlani, Antalis MIS e-Business & SAP Manager

Solution

Antalis deployed the Vistex Solutions for SAP to help it all add up for Antalis, resolving many of their outstanding pain points. For example, while the customer is on the phone or on the website, the available promotions are now automatically displayed and handled at the point of sale. Consequently, it allows Antalis to organize promotions by customer segments, only displaying the active promotions that are matched to the right targets. Vistex set up 5 initial deal types: free gifts, free goods, prize draws, discounted prices, and bundle offers. During the pilot phase, Vistex teamed up with Antalis to take the solution further, proposing 2 additional capabilities: first, if the customer purchases a certain volume of a product over a certain time period, they can receive a free gift, or entry into a prize draw. Second, when adding bundles, if the customer purchases 3 products, they receive the least expensive bundle free of charge.

Results

Setting up promotions is now simplified, allowing Antalis to quickly launch any promotion at any time, eliminating the problem associated with limitations. Marketing professionals throughout the Antalis Group have new promotional capabilities with more agility to build creative offers, including vouchers.

Promotional costs are now easily accrued within SAP, and the promotional activity is reported automatically, using business intelligence. The marketing team can easily identify which promotions are the most successful, based on the built-in KPI reports. Antalis was thrilled with the automated process that decreased the marketing department’s deal management workload and enriched the marketing promotions campaigns. Direct benefits included insights into sales turnovers, and the stable, reliable performance of the software. Antalis also started to exploit more opportunities for pricing management within Solutions for SAP, using the tools for price uploads and price increases.

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